


The Love Song of C. Whitelaw Pine

by seven (sevenpoints)



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenpoints/pseuds/seven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris is at a loss for words. Zach understands anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Love Song of C. Whitelaw Pine

“Something’s bothering you.”  
  
Chris blanched, glad that Zach couldn’t see his face in the dark. “It’s nothing.”  
  
“Once more, with feeling.”  
  
Damn him. “It’s…I don’t even know. I think I’m just tired.”  
  
“No.” Zach reached for his hand, and pulled him down to the hotel bed in whatever the fuck city they were in this time. “You’re not a child, cranky because he missed his nap. What is it?”  
  
A dozen images swept through Chris’ mind, and he tried to shuffle them into some kind of coherent reply. “It’s…I…” The images tangled, snarled on the wallpaper and the hideous brocade. “Can we go outside?”  
  
He let Zach lead the way, through the door, down the stairs, and out to the garden at the back of the hotel. The night was sultry enough that they were alone, the other guests preferring to hide in their climate-controlled cells. Chris could feel sweat dampen his collar, cooling him in the warm wind.  
  
“Is this better?”  
  
“Yeah. Just let me think.” He stared up, and out, over the sordid pansies and calla lilies to the sky, glowing red with light pollution.  
  
“This makes sense, I swear. Just listen, okay?” Zach nodded, and Chris began, reciting the words from memory.  
  
  
_Let us go then, you and I,_  
When the evening is spread out against the sky  
Like a patient etherised upon a table;  
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,  
The muttering retreats  
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels  
And sawdust remnants with oyster-shells:  
Streets that follow like a tedious argument  
Of insidious intent  
To lead you to an overwhelming question…  
  
  
He turned his head to make a face at Zach, and spat the next lines.  
  
  
_Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’_  
Let us go and make our visit.  
  
  
“And I’m so, so tired of it.”  
  
Zach nodded. He understood. Of course he understood, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to rationalize. “It’s only for a few months. Just a scrap of time in our entire lives.”  
  
Chris had to scoff. He knew Zach didn’t really believe that.  
  
  
_There will be time, there will be time_  
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;  
There will be time to murder and create,  
And time for all the works and days of hands  
That lift and drop a question on your plate;  
Time for you and time for me,  
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,  
And for a hundred visions and revisions,  
Before the taking of toast and tea.  
  
  
“But I can feel it all bleeding away. We jump around so much I never actually know what time it is, but I know that time is passing, every second, and we just keep answering the same questions and going through the same motions. What’s the fucking point anymore?”  
  
“We’re doing this for the film. This is our job, Chris. This is the work you get when you become an actor. This is what the audience demands.”  
  
  
_I have known the eyes already, known them all—_  
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,  
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,  
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,  
Then how should I begin  
  
  
“I don’t know, Chris! Do you want to stop? Let this be your last film, your last performance, and just walk away from your work so you can think an unformulated phrase?”  
  
“No! I don’t want to stop. It’s just…”  
  
  
_…if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:_  
Would it have been worth while  
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,  
And turning toward the window, should say:  
“That is not it at all,  
That is not what I meant, at all.”  
  
  
“Not everyone can understand. That’s part of why we do these interviews, so we can explain ourselves and our motivations.”  
  
“They don’t want to know our motivations, Zach! All they want is what they see with their own eyes!”  
  
“That’s all they get. Chris, you’re talking about yourself. Your self is not what's on the screen. They see the performance, that’s it. That’s all we owe them.”  
  
  
_We have lingered in the chambers of the sea_  
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown  
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.  
  
  
“They’re gonna stop liking what they see, eventually. We’ll be abandoned for the next summer blockbuster, tossed away like empty shells.”  
  
“Would that be so terrible? We get our fifteen minutes, just like everyone else.”  
  
“ _But I want my minutes to mean something_.”  
  
Zach looked at him, then at the hybrid tea at their feet. He bent, picked one overblown blossom, and tucked it into Chris’ buttonhole.  
  
  
_No peevish winter wind shall chill_  
No sullen tropic sun shall wither  
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only  
  
  
“All your minutes mean something to me, Chris.”  
  
Chris couldn't speak, stalled instead. “What was that from?”  
  
“‘A Dedication to My Wife.’”  
  
Chris stared at him, and the simple emotion in his lucid brown eyes.  
  
“Zach.”  
  
“ _Chris_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by lafemmechatte’s [Whimper](http://lafemmechatte.livejournal.com/15846.html).


End file.
